Many people say that lard is healthier than vegetable oil. Is there any basis for this statement?

There is no evidence that lard is healthier than vegetable oil. The main component of lard and vegetable oil is fat, which is one of the nutrients in our diet. Moderate intake of fat is good for your health, while excessive intake of fat is harmful to your health. But compared with lard, vegetable oil is more suitable as daily edible oil.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, lard and vegetable oil have their own values. Lard is cool, has the effects of nourishing yin, moistening dryness and detoxifying, and can improve problems such as poor stool, chapped skin and dry cough. Vegetable oil, represented by sesame oil, has the effects of relaxing bowels, detoxicating, promoting granulation and delaying aging, and can improve constipation, alopecia, anemia and dry skin.

Judging from the nutritional composition, lard is mostly homemade, with water content below 5%, fat content above 95%, cholesterol, vitamin A, vitamin E, sodium, iron and other substances, and the content is less than 1%. There are many kinds of vegetable oils, most of which are produced commercially, with a fat content of 99%, and a small amount of vitamin E, calcium, iron and other substances.

Although lard and vegetable oil are mainly fat, the types of fat are quite different. Among the fats in lard, the saturated fat content is above 40% and the unsaturated fat content is about 60%. In vegetable oil, the saturated fat of soybean oil is about 15%, peanut oil is about 20%, sesame oil is about 16%, corn oil is about 14%, sunflower oil is about 13%, rapeseed oil is about 6%, and olive oil is about/kloc-0.

Except lard, the saturated fat of sheep fat is about 54%. Therefore, the saturated fat content of animal fat is generally higher than that of vegetable oil. As we all know, saturated fatty acids are easy to induce cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and metabolic diseases. On the contrary, moderate intake of unsaturated fatty acids is beneficial to maintaining cardiovascular health.

In terms of nutritional components, vegetable oil is generally superior to animal fat, including lard. Of course, we can't say that all vegetable oils are superior to animal oils. For example, the saturated fat content of palm oil is about 35%, while the saturated fat content of deep-sea fish oil is about 28%. From this perspective, the value of palm oil is lower than that of deep-sea fish oil.